The following is a statement from Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice, regarding the latest border apprehension numbers:
When it comes to responding to the regional refugee challenge and humanitarian crisis at our border, the Trump administration has failed miserably.
The challenge has been and continues to be how America can best respond to an increase in spontaneous arrivals from failing states in Central America that are saturated with violence, corruption and human rights violations. In response, Trump has cut aid, bullied neighbors, caged kids, separated families, gutted asylum, truncated or eliminated due process and forced refugees back to dangerous conditions in Northern Mexico. It has led to a human rights catastrophe at our border.
The better approach would be to surge aid to address the root causes of migration, to cooperate with neighbors and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to regionalize the refugee protection challenge, and to build out an asylum system based not on detention, deterrence, and cruelty but rather one that addresses the causes of migration, protects refugees from violence, and surges judges, asylum adjudicators and lawyers so those seeking freedom in America are given a fair and efficient opportunity in a refugee determination process that for many is a matter of life and death.
We call ourselves a civilized country that leads the world in protecting refugees. Given the abuses being committed in our name, and given the workable alternatives available that live up to our ideals, this administration has to be judged an abysmal failure. For Trump, Stephen Miller and the DHS leadership, cruelty is the point. For the majority of the American people, fairness and decency is the point. Only a change in administrations will give fairness and decency a chance.
